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Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Of Pomegranates and Promised Lands

Last night I had the chance to meet with the Leadership Team of Christ Fellowship. This group of dedicated volunteers have a combined experience of decades serving in the church, and there is probably little that I can teach them when it comes to leading. But because I believe these meetings should add value to them, I prepared a training lesson and shared about some foundational expectations that I have for our leaders.

The training revisited a sermon I recently preached on Leadership from the life of Moses in Exodus 15:22-25. (To listen to the sermon CLICK HERE.) The scriptural background is the first challenge that Moses faced after the miracle at the Red Sea. The people came to a place of bitter water, and needing something to drink, they came to Moses for answers. God showed him a piece of wood to throw into the water that made it drinkable in response to Moses crying out to God for HELP.
The leadership principles in the passage are simple:

Leadership necessarily involves movement. Leaders move people from where they are to where they need to go.

Leaders answer questions. If we don't have answers or don't get answers we can't lead people very far.

Leaders cry out to God on behalf of their people. The church leadership we're a part of is a spiritual leadership. We believe that God plays the central role in everything we do. Our direction is His direction, and our answers are His answers. Praying for people makes us account for them in a different way than just how we can use them.

Three times in Moses leadership his people ended up in a place with nothing to drink. At one such place they are pining for the old days (decades ago) when they were enjoying pomegranates in slavery. People often think about pomegranates, leaders think about promised lands.